“Ask any London chef what our ideal meal is, and it’s probably steak-and-kidney pie,” Tom Aikens says. “We like the traditional stuff. We grew up eating stews around a table.” Aikens showcases English classics like shepherd’s pie and coronation chicken salad at Tom’s Kitchen, a casual counterpoint to his eponymous Michelin-starred dining room.

After cooking for 17 years at such landmarks as the Ivy and Le Caprice, Mark Hix has finally opened his own restaurant, Hix Oyster & Chop House, near London’s Smithfield meat market. A longtime champion of British cookery (and author of the recent British Seasonal Food), Hix modeled his new place on 18th-century chophouses, which served slow-roasted, bone-in meats. His modernized menu also includes briny West Country oysters, mild Raj-style mutton curry and his version of bubble and squeak: pan-seared cakes of cabbage and root vegetables lavishly garnished with chanterelles.

Tristan Welch’s passion for old English cookbooks inspired him to give the historically Francophile menu at London’s Launceston Place an Anglo-Saxon makeover. “I am quite the Englishman,” says the Gordon Ramsay protégé. “I like to be British.” He reimagines horseradish (the traditional accompaniment to roast beef) as a spicy granité to garnish a creamy soup of pureed greens.